Book the Twelfth: The Heinous Hotel
by S-Drama-Queen-17
Summary: The Baudelaire orphans encounter all sorts of unpleasant things, including starch, Veronal Fulminating Desserts, a redheaded actress, villains searching for a sugar bowl, and an empty concierge desk.
1. Chapter 1

Dear Reader,

Unless you are a cart or a lawnmower of some sort, you probably do not like being pushed around or kidnapped. And in this latest chapter of the Baudelaires' lives, they are pushed around, kidnapped, and made to endure singing, which is far worse than either one of the former.

This book contains horrible things that will make you weep, cry, and bawl, all of which mean the same thing, over the horrible things that are contained in this book. I will not say that it includes fire, starch, a redheaded actress, Little Red Riding Hood, villains searching for a sugar bowl, Veronal Fulminating Desserts, and an empty concierge desk.

I hope that by now you have put down this book so you will not have to endure reading about the latest unfortunate series of events that happen to the Baudelaires. Even though I have dedicated my life to researching the lives of the Baudelaire children, you have not dedicated your life to reading about them. You would be better off reading some other book.

With all due respect,  
Lemony Snicket

For Beatrice—  
Judged by some  
Loved by me  
Killed by others.

Chapter 1

Whenever you are doing an activity, such as listening to music, going to school, or sawing a hole in a sidewalk at midnight, you like to know things for a reason. For instance, if you are listening to music, you would like to know what inspired the composer of a song so you can make your song sound better than it sounds, particularly if your song is about aardvarks. If you are going to school, you like to know what you need to remember on a test so you will not flunk out of school and end up with songs about aardvarks for whatever reason. And if you are sawing a hole in a sidewalk at midnight, you would like to know, "Why am I sawing a hole in this sidewalk at midnight?" for the simple reason that there is no clear-cut explanation for such actions. If you are reading this book, you would probably like to know why this book is so dreadfully horrible and horribly dreadful, because you are already weeping and tearing your hair out even though the official story has not officially started yet. If this is the case, then you should put down this book immediately before your face becomes waterlogged and your head becomes bald, because this story is only about to get more horrible and dreadful.

But the three Baudelaire children were not listening to any music, nor going to school, nor sawing a hole in a sidewalk, which is a very improper thing to do, even at midnight. They were also not reading this book. The three Baudelaire children were in a taxi with a woman they had never met before named Kit Snicket, and they wanted to know many things for reasons too horrible to describe in detail. There were so many reasons, in fact, that the Baudelaires kept getting tongue-tied, a phrase which here means "tried and failed to ask Kit Snicket questions about their past because there were so many other questions besides," while trying to ask Kit Snicket questions about their past and so many other questions besides.

"How did you—why did you—where—" Violet Baudelaire said, getting tongue-tied. The eldest Baudelaire at fifteen, Violet was an inventor, and the best that I have ever researched. She had invented many devices to get her and her siblings away from evil, a word which here means "the clutches of Count Olaf." Now she wished she had a device that would ask all her questions for her, instead of tying her tongue in knots.

"How can you be—who is—did you—" Klaus Baudelaire said, also getting tongue-tied. Klaus, the middle Baudelaire child, was thirteen and the best researcher that I have ever researched. He could practically memorize an entire book in one sitting, especially if the book was a good one. He had, on many occasions, researched a topic that saved the Baudelaires' very lives, but now he wished he had read up on how to talk quickly and clearly so Kit Snicket could get all his questions at once.

"Neoga—bingo—hoop?" Sunny Baudelaire said, the last of the Baudelaires to get tongue-tied as well. Sunny was a bit more than a baby, and she was already the best biter and the best under-two-year-old chef that I have ever researched. She had quite a few abnormally sharp teeth and even more sharp cooking skills, which had recently saved her life from a deadly fungus. But as she sat trying to battle her way through newly learned words, she found that she would have rather thought about the culinary equivalent of horseradish than make a fool of herself trying to ask questions for which she didn't even know the words.

Kit Snicket looked back at the three children with a look that silenced them, and said, "All your questions will be answered at Hotel Denouement. For now, just enjoy the ride."

The Baudelaires looked at each other. When someone tells you to enjoy the ride, you might listen to music, or read a schoolbook, or saw a hole through your window, if you find that sort of thing enjoyable. But the prospect of an entire taxi ride through the city, still harboring questions upon questions upon questions, was not the least bit enjoyable to the Baudelaires. At least Kit had informed them of their destination, a word which here means "Hotel Denouement."

Hotel Denouement was, Sunny had overheard, the last safe place for V.F.D. members, where there was supposedly going to be a gathering on Thursday, and it was Tuesday, presently. V.F.D. was a secret organization that the Baudelaire parents had belonged to. And the Baudelaire parents had perished in a horrible fire that had destroyed the Baudelaire home and sent the three youngsters off to live with the aforementioned, a word which here means "mentioned before," Count Olaf. Since then, the three children had undergone a series of unfortunate events, each event more unfortunate than the last. And now they were driving away from Briny Beach, where all their misfortune had begun, hoping that now their misfortune was about to end.

Kit Snicket looked back at them through the rear-view mirror and sighed. "But I suppose I can answer a couple of questions. After all, you three have certainly been through many ordeals. Ask away."

Violet looked at Klaus, and Klaus looked at Sunny, and Sunny looked at Violet, and all three of them looked at each other as they wondered what to ask her. Finally Violet spoke. "Do you know where my friend Quigley Quagmire is?"

Kit smiled. "Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, he's the one that sent me here to come retrieve you three. He's at Hotel Denouement, waiting for us."

Violet breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back in her seat.

"Do you know where Captain Widdershins and Phil are?" Klaus asked.

"No, I do not, but I know where they will be, at the very latest tomorrow morning," Kit answered. "And the answer is the same. Hotel Denouement."

Klaus leaned back in his seat too, wishing he had a book with him so he could continue to enjoy the ride.

"Denohshun?" Sunny asked, and Violet was quick to translate.

"Since it is called the last safe place, does that mean we will be safe there?"

Kit sighed too, but not in relief. Her sigh sounded like she hadn't sighed in relief in a very, very long time. "No one can tell that, Sunny Baudelaire. No one can make sure everywhere is safe. You three should know that best of all."

And indeed, they did know that. As much as they and their banker, Mr. Poe, had tried, they could not seem to make anywhere in the world seem safe for them. But they had hoped that Kit's answer would be in the affirmative, a phrase which here means "yes," so that they could finally feel as safe as they had before the terrible fire that had consumed the Baudelaires' lives.

"It's quite a trip, Baudelaires," Kit told them quietly after she had jerked out of her reverie. "We'll have to stop some ways away from the hotel so we don't attract attention. We don't want any of Count Olaf's associates to be on our tail."

When someone says that someone is on their tail, it has nothing to do with someone sprouting an extra appendage from their backside and another person sitting on it. It means that they are right behind them. If you were to be involved in a game of tag, you might say someone is on your tail right before they touch you on the shoulder and yell, "TAG!" in your ear. If you were to be involved in a car chase, then you might say the police are on your tail right before they rear-end you and you sue them. But the Baudelaires were involved in a chase in which the stakes were high and the chances of survival were low, and at that exact moment, the last thing they wanted was to think that Count Olaf was on their tail. So they nodded mutely as Kit continued to drive the taxi around and around the city where they had grown up.

They passed the invention museum, which was Violet's favorite place in town. They passed the library, which was Klaus's favorite place in town. They even passed the playground, which was Sunny's favorite place in town, due to the fact that the chains on the swings were hard and good to bite. But they were incredibly surprised when the taxi pulled to a stop just outside the Baudelaires' most favorite-est favorite place in the entire world and Kit climbed out of the taxi's driver seat.

"Why are we stopping?" Violet asked Kit.

"We're here," Kit said, motioning to the gloom in front of them.

Violet gazed up at the ashen remains of her wonderful home and shook her head. Klaus did the same. The two elder Baudelaires couldn't believe that after all this, Kit had brought them back home. There had to be some mistake. Even Sunny mumbled her disapproval. "Mistry," she said softly, which meant something along the lines of, "Why do we keep ending up at our house? I wish to know."

"This can't be Hotel Denouement," Violet told Kit tearfully. "This is the remains of our mansion."

"This? Oh, no, this isn't the hotel. This is the beginning of our journey to the hotel. If there's anyone following us, we have to make sure that we lose them," Kit said, using a phrase which here means "they won't be following us when we get to the hotel."

Violet nodded, still unsure, and Klaus rested a hand on her shoulder. "Come on, children, there's still a ways to go," Kit told them, pocketing her two poetry books. "Follow me."

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny did as they were told and followed Kit through the dust and ruin of their house. They passed through the library, which had held so many secrets that the Baudelaires had never figured out. They passed through the kitchen, which held so many foods that they never got to taste. They even passed by the staircase, which led to the bedrooms, where their father had been when the fire had started, though they were never to know that. Finally, they came to a specific spot. Kit stamped on it with her foot.

"Ixplayn!" Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "What are you doing? Please tell us!"

"This is where the entrance is, Sunny," Kit answered, kneeling down.

"The entrance to Hotel Denouement?" Violet asked, suddenly realizing just where Kit was planning to go. "But that's just a passageway!"

"Just a passageway? Violet, you should know better that nothing is as it seems. You didn't even know that this passage was here until after you had been in many unpleasant situations, and then the time was ripe for this discovery. Come on, I'll show you."

Kit opened the trapdoor, which indeed led to a passageway, and lowered herself inside. "Come on, you three," she said, disappearing through the hole. Violet looked at her younger brother and sister and shrugged.

"What have we got to lose?"

"Nothing," Klaus admitted. "Go ahead."

Violet climbed in after Kit, and Klaus climbed in after Violet, and Sunny allowed Klaus to lower her down into the passage after he had gotten in.

The Baudelaire eyes took a while to become adjusted to the dark, which was as black as a sidewalk at midnight, but Kit (it seemed) needed no such preparations. She simply and silently slipped through the passage, as quiet as a mime. The children hurried after her, being as quiet as mice when the mice are running around their cage and squeaking, and in this way the four companions made their way to an apartment complex across town.

"We are in 667 Dark Avenue," Kit announced quietly when they appeared at the other end.

Violet looked up, wishing that they could have driven the taxi to Hotel Denouement instead of taking this roundabout route. The passage had ended at the bottom of an elevator shaft, a phrase which here means "a long vertical passage where there should have been an elevator instead of an underground passage to the Baudelaire residence." The end of this passage was at the sixty-sixth floor: the penthouse. The Baudelaires had spent a considerable amount of time living there with the Squalors, but that had ended badly like the others. Jerome Squalor had wished the Baudelaires good luck but had done nothing except walk away when his wife, Esmé, had run off with Count Olaf and two of the three Quagmire triplets, Quigley's brother and sister. What good could be waiting for them at the end of this passageway?

"How do we climb up there?" Klaus asked. "Last time we had a bunch of neckties tied all together, but that was when we were climbing from the top, and we can't ask Sunny to climb up using her teeth, and—"

"Shh, Klaus," Kit said. "A V.F.D. member is always prepared."

"You're a V.F.D. member?" Violet and Klaus chorused.

"Yooar?" Sunny asked, which meant something along the lines of, "She is?"

Kit nodded and lifted her long black dress slightly. On her feet were a pair of classy black pumps, but just above the pumps, on her left ankle, they could see the outline of a tattoo, even in the dark. It was a tattoo of an eye.

"Just like Olaf's!" Violet exclaimed.

"And just like Jacques's!" Klaus added.

Kit nodded again and pulled something from the pocket where she had stowed the books. At first the three children thought it was an umbrella, but when she unfolded it, they realized that it was something similar to what Violet had invented a very long time ago to rescue Sunny from a birdcage. It was the spidery end of a grappling hook.

"And we'll need this." Kit extracted, a word which here means "took out," a long silver bungee cord from her pocket, which was beginning to seem to the Baudelaires like a bottomless pit. She handed both the hook and the cord to Violet. "If you would do the honors," she said, using a phrase which here means "tie a knot," "and tie a knot."

Violet nodded and began to tie a complicated knot that she had invented herself, called the Sumac. In seconds they had a fully-grown grappling hook, useful for scaling the walls of empty elevator shafts. Kit took the grappling hook and threw it expertly, a word which here means "as if she had thrown a grappling hook before." It caught on the very first try, and she began to climb up the wall. "Everyone follow close behind," she whispered.

The three siblings nodded and began to follow close behind, all the while wondering exactly where Kit was leading them. They had never actually gotten acquainted with the strange woman, and it wasn't enough to know that she was the sister of Jacques Snicket and a member of V.F.D. Count Olaf had once been a member of V.F.D. as well, and he had landed the three of them into all sorts of trouble. Jacques had been a member of V.F.D., and he had gotten murdered. But she was their only hope, and besides, if Quigley had sent her, then she had to be a good person. This was what was running through Violet's mind as they climbed floor after floor after floor to the tiny speck of light at the top.

But Klaus was thinking about something else entirely, a phrase which here means "Fiona." Captain Widdershins's stepdaughter had gone and joined Count Olaf's evil crew of multiple henchmen just to be close to her brother Fernald, who happened to now have hooks for hands. Before she had left him for the last time, she had told him to compare her to a food that he liked very much, and then she had kissed him. Klaus could not believe that this had only been a few hours earlier. It seemed like days and days, but it had only been hours. And now he was climbing up an elevator shaft to make sure she wasn't on his tail.

And Sunny was thinking of the last time she had scaled the walls of this very shaft, using only her very sharp four teeth. Since then she had sprouted a few more, but she could imagine that it would be no less difficult to scale the wall with eight teeth than with four. She, for one, was glad that Kit had come along with a portable grappling hook and the answers to at least a couple of their questions. She wanted to be safe at the last safe place, go to the meeting on Thursday, figure out why her life was miserable, and maybe turn it around, a phrase which here means "defeat Count Olaf."

At last, the four of them reached the top and climbed out of the passage. "Now to get to the roof," Kit said.

All three Baudelaires were jolted from their thoughts. "Roof?" all three asked.

"Of course! Follow me."

The Baudelaires had done so much following in the past half hour that they wished they could stop to rest, but as Captain Widdershins had told them, "He or she who hesitates is lost!" and they could tell that the personal philosophy of the eccentric submarine captain applied in this situation. They followed Kit through ten living rooms of the penthouse. Kit seemed unperturbed, a word which here means "to know where she was leading the Baudelaires."

Violet, however, was not unperturbed. "Kit—I mean, Ms. Snicket, um, how do you know the way to the roof?"

"This penthouse," Kit explained, "used to be the last safe place, before it became unsafe. I've been here so many times that I could get to the roof in my sleep. And call me Kit. That saves time."

"This used to be the last safe place?" Klaus asked incredulously.

"Before Esmé married Jerome," Kit answered. "Then it became the last place anyone would ever want to go. Sorry to hear you three had to spend an inordinate amount of time here."

Violet and Klaus looked at each other, and Sunny looked at her siblings. "How did you know we—" Klaus began, but Kit interrupted him, which is a rude thing to do unless you are in no position to hesitate.

"I smell smoke."

The Baudelaires froze, sniffing the air. Indeed, the smell of smoke filled their nostrils and made Sunny's eyes water. "There's fire somewhere," Violet agreed breathlessly.

"We've got to hurry," Kit said, quickening her pace to reach the exit to the roof.

In just a few more minutes, the three Baudelaires and Kit Snicket were teetering on the roof, having just emerged from a pinstripe curtained window. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air and filled the Baudelaire lungs, making it almost impossible for them to breathe. But Kit, who seemed to be used to such matters, was leaning over the edge of the roof and peering down at the street below.

"Have a look at this," she said in a low voice.

Klaus was the first to move over to her. He peered over as well. "Oh, my—Violet, come here."

But Violet was already next to him, covering her mouth in dismay. "Sunny? Sunny, you have to see this."

But Sunny was already there as well, and the four companions stared down at the inferno, a word which here means "a large fire engulfing an apartment building." From the first floor up seemed to be a blazing mass of flames, slowly creeping up the sides. They could hear people on the street screaming and yelling, and windows shattering, and the smoldering of a thousand books. Now they really had to follow Captain Widdershins's personal philosophy or else they would all be lost. "We don't have much time," Kit said. "We have to get over to the next roof. Any ideas?"

"Hook!" Sunny exclaimed, which meant something along the lines of, "Why don't we use that device that we used to scale the elevator shaft?"

"It would take too long, Sunny," Klaus said fearfully, holding Sunny's hand in his.

"I have an idea," Violet said. "Kit, shoot the grappling hook to the next roof. Klaus, Sunny, help me rip up these pinstripe curtains into long thick pieces, all right?"

Everyone set to work, a phrase which here means "shot a grappling hook and began ripping up horribly ugly curtains." With all three Baudelaires working together on the task, the curtains were soon reduced to shreds. Violet made four piles of shreds as Kit tied one end of the grappling hook tightly to a large nail that stuck out of the roof.

"Everyone take a bunch, strap them over the cord of the hook, and swing all the way over there," Violet ordered hurriedly. "I'd seen it done in movies, but I never thought I'd actually do it."

"Will it work?" Klaus asked.

"We won't know," Kit answered, swinging her pile of shreds over the cord, "until we try it."

And she was gone in a rush of wind, her hair streaming behind her as she flew to the next roof. She turned to see that the Baudelaires were still on the roof of 667 Dark Avenue. "Come on, Baudelaires, you can do it!" she yelled in encouragement.

Encouragement is a funny thing. It is meant to try to get you to do something, but sometimes it works backwards. It gets you not to do something. For instance, if you were standing at the edge of a cliff, and someone told you to get so close to the edge that you'd fall off, you would probably back up until you were as far away as you could be, unless you wished to fall off a cliff. If you were somehow transformed into Snow White, who was poisoned by a poisonous apple by her equally poisonous stepmother, when the witch told you to eat the apple you'd probably throw it at her ugly face. This would not be the case, however, if you did not have a literary license, and you would be forced to poison yourself with the apple for the purpose of moving the story along. But with this encouragement, the Baudelaires looked down one time at the fire, which was slowly creeping towards them, and decided to follow Kit's encouragement after all.

"Sunny, you go first, and I'll be right behind you," Klaus said. Sunny nodded, and soon the two of them were flying to the next building, which was either 666 or 668 Dark Avenue. But Violet peered over the edge and gulped. Did she really want to do this?

"Come on, Violet!" Klaus yelled.

"You can do it!" Kit called.

"Violet!" Sunny shrieked.

The fire was now on one of the floors directly beneath her, either sixty-four or sixty-five. Violet shuddered. Why was she hesitating now? She had done things ten times as dangerous in the past. She closed her eyes and thought for something that would encourage her more than her siblings' calls and Kit's frantic yells. _Breathe deeply,_ she told herself, _like you did when you were trying to save Sunny from the Medusoid Mycelium. And when you were trying to figure out how to un-hypnotize Klaus. And think of how they will probably need you later, and remember the promise you made to your parents when you said you'd never let them be alone or in danger…_

The flames burst through the curtained window on the roof. Violet took a deep breath and jumped.

It was the most amazing feeling in the world. She was flying forward, with no effort on her part. She hung on tightly to her makeshift safety fliers, as she named them in her head, so she wouldn't fall sixty-six stories down to the concrete below. She kept her eyes level, concentrated on her siblings. And finally she was on the roof, nearly sobbing with relief, and Klaus and Sunny had rushed up to hug her. Kit hung back, smiling softly.

"All right," Violet said, swallowing her tears. "Let's go."

Kit nodded approvingly, a word which here means "in a way which made Violet feel as if she had done the right thing," and moved toward the roof door on this building. She opened it and crawled down a stepladder that had been placed under the door for that exact purpose. The Baudelaires followed her and emerged in a room that made them all hesitate for a second and say, "Wow."

"Welcome, Baudelaires," said Kit, "to the lobby of Hotel Denouement."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Baudelaires stared in amazement at their surroundings, a word which here means "the lobby of the Hotel Denouement." It was large and oval-shaped, like an eye, and had chandeliers hanging from nearly every inch of the ceiling. Many, many people were milling about, going this way and that, exchanging pleasantries and/or secret coded messages with their eyebrows. All that were wearing sandals had their eye tattoos exposed, and Klaus noted that they were all alike. Each and every tattoo was on the outside of the left ankle, and it was the same insignia, with the letters V, F, and D hidden in the image. Violet saw the elevators, which probably held amazing elevators, unlike 667 Dark Avenue, which had not held an elevator at all in its shaft. And Sunny saw a long, long desk that stretched from one end of the enormous lobby to the other, noted that it was very hard, and wished that she could bite it. And all three of them squirmed with pleasure over the thought that maybe, just maybe, they would be safe here, and all their mysteries would be solved.

"What do you think of it?" Kit asked them, sounding pleasantly pleased.

"Stupendous," Violet sighed.

"Astounding," Klaus breathed.

"Wow!" Sunny cried, throwing her little arms in the air.

Kit smiled. "I thought you'd like it."

"One question," Klaus said thoughtfully, a word which here means "wondering why there was a lobby on the top floor." "Why is the lobby on the top floor?"

"Because we're not allowed to enter from the ground floor," Kit explained. "All visitors must enter through the roof, to avoid suspicion. People on the ground just think this building is for sale, so the floors are numbered backwards. This is floor one, the floor below us is floor two, and so on. Now, I think first we should check all the notices posted on the wall to see if anything important is going on soon besides the gathering on Thursday, of course. Let's all check."

The four of them spread out over the room to read all the white bits of paper plastered on top of the flowery wallpaper. Many, they soon found, were in the style of acrostic poems. Acrostic poems, as I'm sure you know, involve a word written vertically, and then each letter will start a line of the poem. But all of these poems only had three lines, because each acrostic poem spelled out the letters V.F.D. Klaus couldn't help but wonder what a Vacillating Flurry of Distress could do, or why anyone would celebrate Vacuum Fixing Day. Sunny wished she knew why people were concerned with the Velocity of Flying Ducks, and she shuddered when she thought about Varying Forms of Demise. But Violet, after pondering over Vain Frumpy Damsels (this made her think of Carmelita) and Very Forgetful Dairymaids, found the notice she thought might help them.

"Listen to this," she said, and Klaus and Sunny hurried to her side. "This one says ATTENTION! THERE WILL BE AN ALL-NIGHT LUNCHEON ON TUESDAY CONTINUING INTO WEDNESDAY. ONLY THOSE WITH INVITATIONS AND THE WAITERS CAN ATTEND. THAT IS ALL. THANK YOU."

"Sounds odd," Kit commented. All three Baudelaires jumped. They hadn't noticed that she was right behind them. "On the one hand, it could be a meeting that our side has put together, but I think someone might have informed us. On the other hand, it could be persons from Count Olaf's side of the schism, and then we'd have to find out why they were having a luncheon instead of destroying the hotel."

"That seems like the logical thing to do," Violet agreed. "How do we find out?"

"We could check to see if anyone is in the Vicinity For Dining," Klaus said, pointing.

Violet and Sunny followed their brother's finger, which was pointing to a sign. The sign read, "VICINITY FOR DINING." "Does that mean the dining room?"

"Yes," Kit answered, "but I don't think it would be safe to go in without considering the consequences first—"

But Klaus, who had obviously been affected by the "He or she who hesitates is lost" philosophy, pretended not to hear Kit's dire warnings and strode right up to the door.

"Klaus!" Violet called to him over the bustle of the lobby. "Maybe Kit is right!"

"Don't!" Sunny shrieked.

But Klaus opened the door and peered inside.

Violet and Sunny squeezed each other's hands in fear, but they didn't realize that Kit had left their side until they saw her running for the door. She stretched out one white-gloved hand to grab the back of Klaus's collar, but just before she could grab hold, Klaus disappeared, a word which here means "was pulled inside the Vicinity For Dining by an unknown personage inside the room." The door slammed shut behind him.

"Klaus!" Violet and Sunny cried together.

Kit grabbed hold of the doorknob as if it were Klaus's collar and twisted, but to no avail, a phrase which here means "the door remained shut with Klaus inside." She knocked on the door, quietly at first, and then louder, and then louder, and then so loudly that it was amazing that no one was stopping to ask her why she was demanding entry into a secret luncheon. Finally she gave up, looking defeated, and trudged slowly back to the Baudelaire girls, who looked at her as if she had shoved Klaus inside.

"What are you doing?" Violet demanded. "We have to get in there and save my brother!"

"If we can't open it from the outside, there's no way to get into the room. That's the only entrance," Kit said in a hollow tone, a phrase which here means "sounding like she had given up the middle Baudelaire to be tortured by Count Olaf and/or his associates."

"Can't be!" Sunny cried, getting to her two feet.

"Let me try," Violet said firmly, and she strode over to the door.

"Violet, be careful, there are things about doors that you don't understand—"

But Violet, like her brother, did not listen to Kit's warning. Instead she grabbed hold of the doorknob. But instead of getting sucked inside the room, Violet got a severe electrical shock in her hand. "Ow!" she cried, pulling away and waving her hand around to get the pain out, as if red sparks were going to shoot out and make it all better. "That smarts!"

"That smarts" is an expression used when something stings, aches, or otherwise pains someone. It usually has nothing to do with the intelligence quotient of anyone in the surrounding area. If you were to fall off a horse, out of a car, or from a roof, you might say, "That smarts!" Of course, in the case of the roof, you might not say anything to anyone for an extremely long time. But in Violet's case, she was talking about the intelligence of someone, and how surprised she was that a person could have that intelligence. She was expressing her pain, of course, but she was also expressing how frustrated she was that Count Olaf and/or his associates had captured her brother, and the Baudelaires had just arrived at the last safe place. It was supposed to have been safe, but already there had been a kidnapping.

"There's no use, Violet," said Kit. "But I'm formulating a plan in my head as we speak. Let's check in and find a room, and then maybe we can try to locate your brother."

"I've already located my brother," Violet answered, tears springing up in her eyes. "He's behind this door. I just don't know how to get behind the door myself."

But the eldest Baudelaire followed Kit Snicket and her younger sister across the lobby to the long desk that stretched across the room. Kit approached a man behind the desk who was staring at a computer screen. But before Kit could say a word to him, he said in a bored voice, "Hello, Ms. Snicket, so nice of you to join us here at Hotel Denouement. Usual room? I figured. Here's your key." He tossed a key on a small ring to Kit. "Room 668, the address of the building, most special room in the entire place. Feel free to roam, except in the Vicinity For Dining, which is currently off-limits to those without invitations and who are not waiters. Please proceed to the elevators. I'm afraid our concierge service is down, so you'll have to carry your own luggage. Enjoy your stay."

Violet and Sunny stared at the man, who hadn't even looked up from the computer screen, not even to toss the room keys to Kit. Kit, however, looked like she was used to this sort of thing, a phrase which here means "not getting a word in edgewise and getting her keys tossed to her and having a usual room and not having any concierge service at all," so Violet and Sunny followed her over to the elevator doors. The elevator was empty when they entered.

"Press button?" Sunny asked eagerly.

"Yes, you may press the button, Sunny," Kit answered. "We're on floor sixty."

Sunny stretched and stretched and stretched and stretched some more, but her tiny little arms could not reach the sixtieth button on the elevator. Violet picked her up and held her high, but she still could not reach. Finally, when Violet stood on her toes and reached her arms to the fullest extent, Sunny was able to press the button, and the elevator began to go down.

"We have a long way to go," Kit sighed.

Indeed they did, for it took a good fifteen minutes for the elevator to go down through floors one through fifty-nine, and when the doors finally opened, Violet thought she was about to burst. "Please, Kit, tell us what your plan is," she pleaded. "We have to go find Klaus."

"I can't tell you my plan," Kit answered gently, "until we get the note."

"Note?" Sunny asked.

"Klaus's captors will leave us a note in our hotel room," Kit informed them. "I've dealt with this sort of people before, and it's all too predictable. Follow me."

After all the following, the two female Baudelaires thought they would explode with impatience, but they managed to cool their tempers, a phrase which here means "not explode" and follow Kit to Room 668. Kit inserted the key and turned it in the lock. Instead of a clicking noise, it made a silent whispering noise, not unlike the wind that the Baudelaires had heard in the Mortmain Mountains on Mount Fraught and in the Valley of Four Drafts. Kit Snicket opened the door.

Their room was like a hotel all by itself, except for the fact that it was connected to other rooms in a very large building. It had a kitchen, living room, dining room, sitting room, at least a dozen bedrooms, and this was only what the Baudelaires could see from the doorway. Kit entered and Violet and Sunny followed, not minding the following this time. But while they marveled over their new surroundings, Kit headed straight for the bed in the first bedroom. On the smoothly spread cover was a note. She picked it up and read it aloud, a word which here means "so Violet and Sunny would know what had happened to their brother."

"'Dear Volunteers,'" Kit read, her voice trembling slightly, "'we are sorry to inform you—why lie? We are delighted to inform you that we have your brother, Klaus Baudelaire, in our clutches. At this very moment our entire staff of villainous persons is humiliating him, and he must find it very unpleasant. If you wish to save your brother from even more dire consequences, it would be best to give up the thought immediately, because nothing can save him now. But if you wish to join in the lovely pain that he is about to experience, you may present yourselves accordingly at the Vicinity For Dining on floor one. Signed, The Most Handsome Count That Ever Walked The Earth and his crew."

"It's in Fiona's handwriting," Violet gasped.

Sunny looked and saw that this was true. When they had been with Fiona on the Queequeg, she had written down many things for them to see. And now, on the sixtieth floor of the Hotel Denouement, Violet and Sunny could see that it was the same handwriting, if much shakier. Fiona really was working for Olaf now.

"But if Fiona is here to write a note," Violet exclaimed all of a sudden, a phrase which here means "when she realized something," "then so is Olaf! How could they have gotten here in time to get a note in our room before we got here?"

"Olaf has associates all over this hotel," Kit explained grimly. For the first time since the children had met her that morning, her voice was shaking uncontrollably, and she didn't sound like she'd ever get used to what she was saying. "The number of evil people in the world is growing, and it seems like the number of well-read people in the world is diminishing." She wiped her eyes. "That's what my brother Jacques always told me. Then he told me that I was never supposed to diminish, because I was one of the few well-read people who could help save the regular people from the evil people." She looked at the Baudelaires, who could see every tear glistening under the light bulb on the ceiling. "I haven't seen him in a very, very long time."

Violet looked at Sunny, and Sunny looked at Violet, and they both looked at each other, and they both knew that the other was wondering if they should come clean, a phrase which here means "tell Kit that her brother Jacques was murdered by Count Olaf." Finally, Violet spoke.

"Kit," she said softly, "Jacques died."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Kit looked up at them. "I know," she said silently. "I read it in the newspaper."

"The _Daily Punctilio?_" Violet said incredulously, a word which here means "not believing that someone so intelligent could read the most misinformed newspaper that ever existed." "How can you read that?"

"I take it with a grain of salt," Kit replied. When someone says that they take something with a grain of salt, it does not refer to any form of sodium. It is saying that they read or listen to something knowing full well that what is being said is probably false, and possibly ridiculous. If you were to take it with a grain of salt when your mother told you to clean your room, you would know that she wants your room clean but not do it, because you would think she was not serious about it, and you would probably end up grounded. If you were to take the laws with a grain of salt, you might end up in jail. Recently I took a warning from a comrade of mine with a grain of salt, and I ended up in an underwater trench, surrounded by eels, piranhas, and female ninjas. As you can see, taking most things with a grain of salt can be dangerous, but in this case it was necessary for Kit to take the _Daily Punctilio_ with a grain of salt for the simple fact that all of the newspaper's reports were mostly fictitious, a word which here means "made up off the top of the reporters' heads."

"Why?" Sunny asked.

"Count Olaf has at least one associate working in the _Daily Punctilio_ office, and I find it necessary to keep up with what this one reporter says."

"Who is she?" Violet asked.

"I can't tell you her name," Kit answered. "I believe she is growing more and more dangerous as we speak. But the one thing I did find out from that newspaper was that Jacques was murdered, and you three were framed for it."

"Dedukshun?" Sunny asked, and Violet quickly told Kit what her sister meant.

"Sunny wants to know how you figured that out," she said, "because in the article it said that Count Omar was murdered and Veronica, Klyde, and Susie Baudelaire were responsible."

"I saw the pictures," Kit informed them, "and I knew that Jacques wasn't Count Olaf any more than Klaus is. And I saw you three, and I knew that it wasn't Veronica, Klyde, and Susie. It was Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, and the town of V.F.D. was in an uproar over it."

Violet nodded. All three of them went silent, remembering the horrible events in V.F.D. At last, Kit spoke up again. "Who wants to hear about my plan?"

"Yeah!" Sunny exclaimed.

"We'll need a chef for this plan to work," Kit told them.

"Me!" Sunny volunteered.

"Thank you, Sunny, for volunteering. But we also need a kitchen and some ingredients. Somewhere in the kitchen of the Hotel Denouement is a recipe for Veronal Fulminating Desserts."

"Veronal? Fulminating?" Violet said, confused. "If Klaus were here he'd be able to tell us what those words mean."

"Veronal means hypnotic, and fulminating means exploding," Kit explained. "The desserts are made with Various Febrifugal Drugs. Febrifugal means medicinal, so we know that they are safe and won't cause lasting harm if we use them in the correct way. If we made Veronal Fulminating Desserts and serve them to the luncheon, disguised as waiters, then we can give all the people inside Virtuous Flax Disease."

"What is that?" Violet asked.

"Virtuous Flax Disease is a tool only used by our side of the schism. It will make the villains woozy and confused, and possibly even giggly, so all we have to do is come up with an outlandish reason why we would need Klaus. Then they'll just hand him to us straight away."

"But why would we need Klaus?" Violet asked.

The three of them pondered this, and they pondered it, and pondered and pondered and pondered until their heads felt like they were going to explode if they pondered any longer. As I'm sure you know, if you ponder something for an extended, a word which here means "long," period of time, you might get a headache, or your eyes might cross. Kit began to get a headache, and Violet's eyes began to cross, and Sunny got a headache while her eyes crossed. At last they figured something out, which was that they had no clue how to convince Olaf and company that they needed Klaus.

"I don't have the faintest idea," Kit said in mild amazement.

"Me neither," Violet admitted.

"Either!" Sunny cried.

"I expect that if we get some help, we'll have more ideas," Kit sighed. "After all, two heads are better than one, and six heads are better than three."

Kit was right about many things. She was right that Klaus shouldn't have gone near the Vicinity for Dining, and neither should Violet, and that they had to go through the roof to get to the Hotel, and that things were not always what they seemed, but in some cases she was wrong about two heads being better than one. If an elephant had two heads, it would be too heavy, and it would topple over and caused an earthquake. Uncle Monty, whom the Baudelaires had lived with for a short period of time, had had a snake with two heads, and this hadn't prevented it from being sold at the Herpetological Society. But in this case, Kit was right. Since the two Baudelaire girls and the one Snicket girl couldn't come up with any ideas as to how to convince a giggly Olaf that they needed Klaus, it would be best to have a few more heads to think up ideas. But since they didn't have more heads, they had no ideas.

"I believe my brother will be showing up soon," Kit said faintly.

Violet looked down at Sunny, and then back at Kit. "But Kit, your brother is—"

"Not Jacques. My other brother. He received a Verse Fluctuation Declaration by carrier pigeon, and he heard that an old friend of his was stopping by for the gathering, so he might swing by to check up on us."

"What is his name?" Violet asked.

Kit opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment, there was a large commotion just outside their door. All three stared at the door, as if just with their mind power, they could make it open on its own. But since their mind power could not even come up with an idea as to why they needed Klaus besides the fact that he was their brother, it could not open a door. Kit slowly walked over to the door and opened it with one of her gloved hands.

"Hello?" she called carefully. "Hello? Is anyone—"

She had taken maybe two steps forward, and suddenly, with a loud clanging noise, the floor opened up underneath her and she disappeared with a scream. Quickly, the floor closed up again.

Violet and Sunny were stunned, a word which here means "completely unsure what to do, because without Kit they had no clue how to find their way around Hotel Denouement." "Kit?" Violet finally called, leaping up from the bed. "Kit? Where did you go?"

"Kit?" Sunny cried, taking a few tottery running steps out the door.

"Kit?" Violet said softly, reaching the place where the woman had fallen through the floor. She fell to her knees and began to feel out the carpet, seeing if there was a door she could open and go through. But there was no such door. I had looked for the door before Violet had ever reached that spot, though I would have no chance to do it again. Slowly, very slowly, Violet crept back into the room, her eyes wide with fear. Sunny followed.

"Wadoo?" Sunny asked, which meant something along the lines of, "What do we do now?"

"I'm not sure, Sunny," Violet said, and I wish I could have been there to tell her that eventually they would find out what happened to Kit and that they would see Klaus again, but I wasn't, so I have to weep silently with Violet in frustration about all the horrible unsafe things that happened at the last safe place. Finally, Violet got to her feet, a phrase which here means "stood up and had a goal." "We need to find Quigley."

"Quig?" Sunny asked.

"Yes. Kit said he was somewhere in the hotel. We have to find him. He's been here longer than we have. He'll know what to do next."

So the two sisters traveled back to the elevator, wary of disappearing floors and trapdoors, and traveled all the way back up to floor one, where they headed for the concierge desk.

As anyone who has visited a hotel knows, especially if the hotel was in France, the concierge desk is for people who wish to know things about the hotel. They help with luggage and all sorts of hotel-related things, but as Violet and Sunny knew, they usually had a list of all the occupants of the hotel, and which rooms they were staying in. Violet wanted to see if Quigley was on the list. If he was, they were one step closer to finding Klaus.

Fortunately for them, the concierge desk was vacant, a word which here means "no one was in it." They crept behind the desk and checked around for lists of any sort. Sunny saw a list of people with laundry duties. Violet saw a list of all the things V.F.D. stood for, and that list seemed to be interminable, a word which here means "all the things that V.F.D. stood for never ended, and people were coming up with new ones all the time." But finally, they both spotted a list of Various Floor Denizens, with rooms numbered from one to eight hundred and thirty-six.

But even with eight hundred and thirty-six occupied rooms, Violet could tell almost at a glance that Quigley was not on the list. As she scanned all eight hundred and thirty-six slots, she realized that not one name started with a Q. Sunny patted her on the back gingerly, a word which here means "so as to not disturb her sister when she was so obviously upset."

"No," said Violet. "Kit said he was here. She said he sent him! He has to be here."

"Maybe gram?" Sunny suggested.

"An anagram?" Violet asked. "What is that?"

Sunny opened her mouth to explain, but then she sighed. She just didn't have the vocabulary to explain that an anagram was a bunch of letters that formed a word or a phrase and then rearranged to find another word or a phrase. She also didn't have the vocabulary to tell Violet that she and Klaus had rearranged an entire list of names trying to save Violet from unnecessary cranioectomy at Heimlich Hospital. So she tried to think of a way to make her older sister understand.

"Pen," she said finally.

"You need a pen? Um…here." Violet grabbed a pen off the concierge desk.

Sunny took it and began to scribble. To a normal human being, it seemed like she was forming chicken scratch, a phrase which here means "something that looks like a chicken has stomped its little chickeny feet in it and messed it all up." But Violet Baudelaire was no normal human being. She, along with her brother and sister, was an extraordinary human being. So as Sunny scribbled away, Violet began to tie her hair back, a sign that she was thinking very hard about what Sunny was trying to say.

When Sunny was done, Violet scrutinized her handiwork, a phrase which here means "looked very hard at her chicken scratch, trying to figure out what Sunny meant." "Does that line say Violet Baudelaire?" she asked finally.

"Yup," Sunny said proudly.

"And that line…" Violet squinted at it, feeling like Klaus without his glasses. "It says Lauro…no, Laura….V….Bleeding?"

"No," Sunny answered impatiently.

"Bleed…Bleedy…Bleediotie?"

"Yeah!" Sunny cried excitedly.

"Laura V. Bleediotie? I don't understand," said Violet.

"Scramble," Sunny told her.

Violet scrutinized it further and realized what her sister was saying. "Oh! You're saying that if I rearranged the letters in Violet Baudelaire I'd get Laura V. Bleediotie?"

"Yeah!" Sunny cried.

"So an anagram is like a word or phrase with the letters rearranged to make another word or phrase, and you think Quigley's name might be on here as an anagram?"

"Yeah!"

Violet looked proudly at her little sister. "You really are something, Sunny. Come on, let's get to work."

When you say that someone is something, there is a cornucopia, a word which here means "a lot," of possible meanings. For instance, if you told your math teacher that she was something, you might be saying she was something nice, or something pretty, or something horribly, horribly mean. If you told your airplane captain that he was something, you might be saying he was something good, something skilled, or something that was sending you crashing down from 20,000 feet up in the air. I recently told a female ninja that she was something and she took it the wrong way, a phrase which here means "I ended up in a headlock underwater." But when Violet told Sunny she was something, she meant that Sunny was something that could help them find Quigley and solve the mysteries and eventually led them to Klaus and Kit.

"There's just one problem, Sunny," Violet said suddenly, after they had skimmed the list again. "We don't have time to go through eight hundred and thirty-six names to see if they say Quigley Quagmire!"

"Cue!" Sunny told her.

"That's right, we can cross out all the names that don't have two Q's in them. Good thinking, Sunny." And Violet hurriedly crossed off all the names on the long list that didn't contain two Q's. When she was done, she ended up with a list that looked something like this:

Equestrina L. Equim – Room 235

Paulo Q. Quiestran – Room 811

Wanqui von Helquist – Room 534

Guiermy Q. Quelgia – Room 555

Sugar B. QuelBom – Room 142

Aipomer Q. Blanquest – Room 35

"How can we make this go faster?" Violet asked.

"Tea," said Sunny.

"You're right, Quigley's name doesn't have a T in it, so we can cross off all the ones that do."

They went down the list. Equestrina L. Equim had a T. She was crossed off. Paulo Q. Quiestran had a T. He was crossed off. Wanqui von Helquist and Aipomer Q. Blanquest both had T's. They were both crossed off.

"All that's left is Guiermy Q. Quelgia and Sugar B. Quelbom," said Violet. "Any other suggestions?"

"Eye!"

"That's right, Quigley's name has an I! Sugar B. Quelbom doesn't have an I, so it must be Guiermy Q. Quelgia!"

"No! Eye!"

Violet looked around. Striding out of the Vicinity For Dining was none other than Esmé Squalor, who had a hat like an enormous eye. Violet and Sunny crouched low and small in the corner of the concierge desk. The eye seemed to be staring down at the two Baudelaire girls as they tried to be inconspicuous, a word which here means "unseen by Esmé's giant eye hat."

Esmé stopped by the long desk to speak to the man that had previously checked the Baudelaires and Kit Snicket in. "Hello," she said impatiently. "Has anyone by the name of Geraldine Julienne stopped and checked in?"

"No, I'm sorry, ma'am, they haven't," the man said, sounding blasé, a word which here means "like he wasn't really interested in what Esmé had to say."

"Let me know when she does, all right?" Esmé said roughly. "Page me when she arrives, and our luncheon gathering will be complete."

"What is your name?" the man asked.

At this Esmé seemed to inflate like a giant Esmé balloon. "You don't know who I am? I am Esmé Gigi Genevieve Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial advisor! Page me at once when Geraldine gets here!" And she turned on her heel and stalked off in a fury toward the Vicinity For Dining, opened the door, and slammed it shut behind her.

Violet let out her breath, which she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "Good, she didn't spot us. Haven't we heard that name before? Geraldine Julienne?"

"Dunno," said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of "I haven't a clue."

Violet shrugged. "Oh, well. Come on, Sunny, we have to get to Room 555. In this case, he who hesitates is lost."

"Or she!" Sunny piped up, and together they made their way to the elevator and went down to floor forty-three.

"This way," Violet hissed when they climbed out, taking Sunny's hand and hurrying to the right. There were signs all over the walls, and Violet could hardly distinguish which signs said more acrostic poems like "Vehement Fuzz Dimples" and "Vein Festers Demandingly," and which signs told her to go right if she wanted rooms 492-579.

After two more right turns and a couple lefts, the two Baudelaires finally reached a stretch of hallway that ended in a glass window. "It's got to be down this hallway," Violet said, quite out of breath from all the running and the sign-looking. They ran further, counting the numbers. "549…551…553…this is it, Sunny! 555!"

Violet had been imagining this moment from the minute that Quigley had slipped from behind her on the toboggan floating down Stricken Stream. She had imagined that she would throw open the door and there Quigley would be, waiting for her arrival. So she was extremely disappointed when she found the door locked.

"Oh well," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "I guess they usually keep the doors locked in a hotel, right?" Violet knocked frantically.

"Quigley?" she called. "Quigley, are you in there? It's me, Violet! Open the door!"

An eye appeared in the door's peephole, a very familiar eye. Then came the sound of someone fumbling with the doorknob on the inside. And at last, after all the running and waiting and following, the door opened, and Violet rushed in to give the occupant a big bear hug, a phrase which here means "practically tackle him to the ground."

"It's good to see you, too, Violet," said Quigley Quagmire.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I probably don't have to tell you that Violet was overjoyed to see Quigley again and that Quigley was equally as overjoyed to see Violet. I probably don't have to tell you that Sunny, for the most part, hung back and grinned a toothy grin. I probably don't have to tell you that there was much hugging in the little reunion, and I definitely don't have to tell you that Violet and Quigley compared facts, a phrase which here means "told one another exactly what had happened since the last time they had seen each other."

"So I was shooting down the river and I ended up on Briny Beach, for whatever reason," Quigley told the two Baudelaire girls. "And there was a woman there. She told me that she'd take me to the last safe place if I kept quiet and didn't ask questions. Well, I was so dazed that I never thought to ask if she was on our side of the schism or not, and I had told you to meet me at Hotel Denouement, so—"

"Is _that_ what you said? We couldn't hear you over the rush of the waterfall!" Violet said.

"I did. So we ended up in front of your mansion, Violet, and I knew that it couldn't be Hotel Denouement because I had seen many dozens of maps of the city. But the woman said to follow her, and we went through a long, long tunnel and came out at the building next door. And then we went up on the roof and parasailed over to this roof. And then, when we reached this roof, the woman told me she had to go. I asked her what her name was, and she just told me 'R.' Isn't that odd?"

"Very odd," Violet agreed. "What happened then?"

"She took her parasail and flew off," Quigley answered. "What has happened with you?"

"Well, we went aboard the Queequeg and after finding out about the Medusoid Mycelium—that's a deadly mushroom—we got your Volunteer Factual Dispatch and came to Briny Beach, where Kit was waiting for us in the taxi. But Quigley, they took Klaus into the secret luncheon in the Vicinity For Dining, and then Kit fell through a hole in the floor, and now we don't know what to do next!"

"Hmm," Quigley said ponderously, a word which here means "considering everything Violet had told him and what he knew from experience." "This is a predicament."

"Dessert!" Sunny said suddenly.

Violet gasped and put a hand to her forehead. "That's right! Kit mentioned making Veronal Fulminating Desserts to serve to the luncheon, and all we would have to do was make up a reason why we needed them to give Klaus to us."

"Make up a reason?" Quigley repeated.

"Yes, make up a reason. It has to be slightly ridiculous, because they'll be woozy from the Various Febrifugal Drugs in the Dessert. The condition is called Virtuous Flax Disease."

Quigley racked his brain, a phrase which here means "thought very hard about why they would need Klaus for a ridiculous reason." "I can't think of anything," he said.

"Neither can we," Violet admitted sadly.

"But we can still make the desserts, can't we? And then we can think for a reason after they're ready."

Violet nodded. "Let's do that, then. Kit mentioned that the recipe for the Various Febrifugal Drugs was in the Hotel Denouement kitchen, which is on the first floor."

"Let's go," Quigley said resolutely, and the three volunteers hurried out of the room and to the first floor.

While they were in the elevator, which turned out to be very spacious and comfortable, almost like a room within itself, the intercom buzzed on. Violet turned her attention toward the small speaker in the corner of the elevator as it passed floor thirty-two. "Attention, please. Will Esmé Gigi Genevieve Squalor please come to the front desk. Your previously requested guest is waiting. Thank you, that is all."

"Esmé Squalor?" Quigley said in a worried tone.

"Geraldine," Sunny said.

"Yes, Esmé wanted to know when a woman named Geraldine Julienne checks in," Violet told Quigley.

"Geraldine Julienne? Hm…that sounds vaguely familiar," Quigley commented, using a phrase that here means "like I've heard it somewhere before."

"It's almost as if we've heard it somewhere before," Violet agreed, "but we can't remember where."

"That's for certain," Quigley answered. "Are we there yet?"

"Almost," said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of, "Not quite, but we are close."

At last the bell on the elevator gave a loud _ding_ and the three of them stepped into the lobby and let the doors shut behind them. Violet started to head for the front desk but stopped dead in her tracks, a phrase which here means "because she saw Esmé Squalor at the desk." "Quick, hide!" she hissed, and she, Quigley, and Sunny dove out of sight behind the empty concierge desk.

"Your guest has arrived, ma'am," the man said, still bored.

"I know that, you made an announcement!" Esmé cried impatiently. "Where is she?"

"She's putting her luggage in her room, room 836. It's the last room we had left; most of the others are reserved for the big gathering on Thursday."

"What?!" Esmé cried. "You imbecile! You fool! Why would you let her go up when we are so obviously right across the lobby? It's not in to disregard an important financial advisor such as myself! What do you think you are doing?"

"I just work here, ma'am."

At this, Esmé let out what sounded like a groan crossed with an inhuman battle cry, and she stormed off toward the elevators. The Baudelaires and Quigley didn't emerge from their hiding spot until the elevator had safely disappeared, and then they looked at each other with concern.

"It must be very important to her to have everyone assembled," Quigley said worriedly.

"It does sound like it," Violet agreed, concern wrinkling her forehead. "But we don't have time to consider what this means. He or she who hesitates is lost. And in this case, if we hesitate, our brother is lost. So we have to get to the kitchen."

"One problem," Quigley said sheepishly, a word which here means "ashamed because he hadn't told the Baudelaires this before." "I don't know where the kitchen is."

"But you told us in the elevator that you had studied all sorts of maps of the hotel!" Violet said disbelievingly.

"I did," said Quigley, "but I don't remember where on the first floor the kitchen is located. We can always ask the front desk. They'd be happy to oblige. I'll do it, if you wait here."

Quigley hurried over to the man, while Violet and Sunny hung back, a phrase which here means "stayed where they were while Quigley figured out where they were going." Violet shivered and thought of her brother, and how unpleasantly the villains were probably treating him, and how many times since he had been taken that they could have used him most. And Sunny thought of how Kit had mysteriously disappeared, and where she could have ended up, and how they hadn't stopped moving since arriving at the hotel. In Sunny's mind, "safe" was synonymous with "rest," so the youngest Baudelaire didn't understand how the last safe place could contain so much running from danger. But, she reasoned, it might have been just because she was a Baudelaire, and unfortunate things were always happening to her, so she'd better get used to it. And I'm very sorry to say that she was right.

It took Quigley less than thirty seconds to ask the man and walk back, and he told Violet and Sunny in a low tone, "It's through the double doors to the right," and the three set off running, and Sunny was proven right. They ran until they came to a door marked with a large sign that said, "KITCHEN," though not aloud or it might have been too conspicuous. Violet began to open the door, but Quigley grabbed her hand away and put a finger on her lips, and then brought his ear closer to the door. Sunny and Violet did the same.

"Goodness gracious," a voice inside was saying, "so many pots and pans and ingredients—and books! It's like a mini-library in here! This is wonderful! I'll have so many things to cook! I wonder where the captain is, and if the children made it out all right. I'm sure they did, though, so there's no need to worry about it. I'll just whip up some fancy vanilla pudding, and then I'll feel good as new!"

Feeling good as new is a very vague term. When you were new, you were a baby, and your age was measured in minutes and not years. When someone says they feel good as new, they rarely mean that they feel like crying and screaming and sucking their thumb and resisting too much light exposure. They feel new like they have just gotten out of bed, particularly if they are a morning person, and the new day is before them. The voice inside the kitchen sounded like a voice that was used to feeling good as new, which usually means "extra chipper," and Violet and Sunny soon realized exactly who they were listening to. Violet threw the door open.

"Phil!" she said.

"Cookie!" Sunny exclaimed.

"Baudelaires!" Phil cried, dropping his pots and pans on the stove with a loud _clang. _"I knew you'd made it out all right! Where's Klaus, and who is this that you're with?"

Violet had momentarily forgotten her brother's plight, a word which here means "being kidnapped by Count Olaf," and she was so ashamed of having forgotten him for even one teensy little second that she dropped her gaze, a phrase which here means "looked down at the tiled floor and summoned up every memory of Klaus she could remember." Quigley took a step forward and extended his hand so Phil could shake it. "I'm Quigley Quagmire, sir," he said politely. "I'm here to help."

"Well, of course you are!" Phil said brightly, a large grin on his face. "I knew the minute you walked in that you were here to help. The question is, help with what? And where is Klaus?"

"Klaus was taken," Violet said softly. "Olaf has him."

"Oh," Phil said quietly. As I'm sure you know, when someone says, "Oh," they either mean a) that they are not particularly interested in what the person has just said, or b) that they completely understand what the person said. Of course, these are not all the reasons for saying, "Oh." One could say, "Oh," and then say, "Laugh," and they would be saying a name for a villainous count who schemed and kidnapped to steal fortunes. But in this case, Phil was saying that he completely understood. Whether or not he completely understood remained to be seen, and from his next comment, the Baudelaires and Quigley deduced, a word that here means "figured out," that Phil did not completely understand the seriousness of the situation. "He's probably fine," Phil told them. "He might even be having the time of his life!"

"Optimist," Sunny told Quigley, which meant something like, "Phil can always see the bright side of things."

When someone tells you something utterly ridiculous or nonsensical, sometimes it is best to tell them exactly why they are utterly ridiculous or nonsensical. But other times, it is best to just ignore the utterly ridiculous or nonsensical comment completely. Violet chose to do the latter.

"Phil, we have a plan to get Klaus out of the Vicinity For Dining," she said, completely ignoring his utterly ridiculous and nonsensical comment. "We have to find the recipe for Veronal Fulminating Desserts and make a bunch of them to give to the secret luncheon. Have you looked at any of the cookbooks in here?"

"Not yet," Phil answered. "I was admiring the fine pots and pans they keep in this establishment."

"First things first," said Violet, using a phrase which here means "everything important is more important than everything else, so we must take care of it before we take care of anything else." "Everyone grab a cookbook and see if you can find the recipe for Veronal Fulminating Desserts, quick!"

Quickly, the four of them raided the cupboard and shelves for every cookbook in the establishment, a word which here means "Hotel Denouement," and began to riffle through the pages to find the recipe for Veronal Fulminating Desserts, which turned out to be nearly impossible. There were thousands of thousands of pages of recipes, all of which were long and confusing and in tiny print. Half of them sounded disgusting, another fourth sounded scrumptious, a word which here means "like good food," and most of them could make more acrostic poetry. Violet wrinkled her nose at Vegetable Filet Dish and Veal, Fish, and Dolphin. Quigley cringed at Very Full Diet and Villus Food Digits. Phil thought all of them sounded delicious and busied himself with his pots and pans. But it was Sunny who finally found the recipe they needed, after nearly fifteen minutes of fruitless searching.

"Veronal Fulminating Desserts!" she cried, jabbing her finger at a page in front of her.

"Good job, Sunny!" Violet said. "What are the ingredients?"

"Flassa, creem, ohjay, cheez," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "Flaxseed, whipped cream, orange juice, and cheese."

Violet wrinkled her nose again. "Sounds disgusting."

"Only chance," Sunny told her. "Save Klaus."

"You're right, Sunny. Everyone split up and look for flaxseed, whipped cream, orange juice, and cheese!"

They spread out over the large kitchen. Quigley looked in the refrigerator, which (fortunately) had orange juice and whipped cream. "We have two of them," he said. "Only two more left." Sunny opened an entire row of cupboards before pulling out a box of cheese crackers. "Cheez!" she said happily.

But the flaxseed was harder to find. "I don't believe most chefs keep flaxseed on hand," Violet said, using a phrase which here means "close by in case they need it to cook with." "Don't you make linen with it?"

"Yes," said Phil, "but I'm sure there's some around here somewhere."

"What are you looking for?" came a voice from the doorway.

All four of them wheeled around. Phil wheeled around so fast that he spilled some of the orange juice and slipped in it. At the doorway ("Oh, no, we left the door open!" Violet thought worriedly) stood a boy and a girl, almost the exact height, but completely different in physical appearance. The girl had pale, pale skin, the color of the moon at midnight, with a sprinkling of freckles across her rather large nose. Her hair was curly and messy, and under the glaring light of the kitchen it shone a vibrant red. The boy had an olive complexion, which does not mean that he had olives for skin. His skin was the color of olive skins, making him look less like a person and more like a plant. He had dark hair that hung just above his ears, and the most noticeable thing about him was that he was wearing a pair of steel-toed boots. Both of them looked deadly serious.

"We're—not looking for anything," Violet said nervously, knowing that it was a feeble excuse and they wouldn't believe her. Behind her, Quigley was helping Phil to his feet.

"Are you all right?" he hissed.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine. My leg broke my fall," Phil answered optimistically.

"I don't believe you," said the girl, eying them suspiciously. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

Violet swallowed and thought of the false _Daily Punctilio _articles. "Um, I don't believe you could have—"

"Heimlich!" Sunny cried suddenly.

Violet wheeled around again, this time thinking someone was choking and needed the Heimlich maneuver, a very unpleasant process in which someone squeezes a choking person's stomach to make the item which is blocking the air passage come out. I am told it is very, very uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as choking. But no one was choking. Quigley and Phil looked at Violet mutely, a word which here means "without saying a word." Then Violet looked back down at Sunny. "What is it, Sunny?" she asked, rather worried.

But Sunny pointed at the redheaded girl. "Heimlich!"

For once, Violet was at a loss, a phrase which here means "unsure of what Sunny was trying to tell her." "What are you saying?" she asked.

"Heimlich!" Sunny insisted.

Violet looked up at the girl, who was staring at Sunny with a ponderous expression. "I'm sorry, but do you know anything about Heimlich?"

"Heimlich Hospital," the girl said softly.

"Heimlich!" Sunny cried, glad that someone had understood her.

"What about Heimlich Hospital?" Violet asked, confused.

"I was there…when you were there."

"Yeah!" Sunny cried. "Saw you!"

"You were part of V.F.D., weren't you?" the girl asked, a grin breaking out on her face. "You were part of the Volunteers Fighting Disease, right?"

"Yeah!" said Sunny. "Clarissa Dalloway!"

The girl nodded. "Yes, that is my name. How did you remember?"

"Sad," said Sunny. "In hospital."

The girl gave a huge smile. "No, I was just acting sad. That's my special skill to help V.F.D. The real V.F.D., that is. I'm a great pretender. I was practicing."

"So they're on our side?" asked the boy, sounding relieved.

"Sounds like it," Clarissa replied. "Everyone, I'm Clarissa Dalloway, and this is my brother, Ronald Dalloway."

"Are you two related?" Quigley asked. "You don't look a thing like each other!"

Clarissa and Ronald looked at each other, as if they were realizing this for the first time. "Guess not," Ronald finally said with a laugh. "You two must be two of the Baudelaires Kit told us so much about."

"Kit?" Violet asked, finally finding her voice. "You knew Kit Snicket?"

"She was our mentor," Ronald answered. "When we got recruited, she taught us how to use our skills."

"What's your skill?" Phil asked him.

"Writing in code," Ronald answered. "I know all sorts of codes. I learned about them here in the V.F.D. library."

"Library?" Sunny asked, which meant something along the lines of, "V.F.D. has a library? Where is it?"

"Listen, we really don't have time to talk," Violet said, her eyes already scanning the shelves again for a container of flaxseed. "We have to make some Veronal Fulminating Desserts and save my brother from Count Olaf!"

"Neither of you would happen to know if the Hotel Denouement kitchen contains flaxseed, would you?" Quigley asked them.

Clarissa and Ronald looked at each other understandingly, a word which here means "knowing what the other was thinking." Clarissa nodded. Ronald walked across the tiles to one of the open cupboards, which he closed. He shut the next one also. The others watched in confusion as he shut four more in a row.

"Huh?" Sunny said, which meant, "I am rather confused."

Ronald turned back to her and nodded. Then he moved back to the third one he had touched and opened it. It was full to bursting, a phrase which here means "quite full," of boxes of noodles. He closed it and reopened it. This time it had all sorts of soup cans in it. He closed it and opened it again, and this time it had—

"Seeds?" Violet exclaimed in amazement, taking a jar out. "'Flaxseed'?" she read aloud. "Amazing!"

"That was incredible!" Phil exclaimed. "How did you do that?"

"Code," Ronald answered. "I've learned every Hotel Denouement code there is. I knew it would come in handy someday to learn the kitchen seed code."

"All right, then," Quigley said, impressed. "Do you two want to help us?"

"Because we'd understand if you'd rather not," Violet added quickly.

Clarissa and Ronald looked at each other. "Absolutely," Ronald said. "But first, tell us this: Do any of you know Kit Snicket?"

Violet, Sunny, and Quigley all looked around at each other. "Why?" Violet finally asked.

"She was our mentor, like we said before," Clarissa answered. "She was supposed to be tutoring us on our skills. She left this morning and said she'd be back this afternoon—but she hasn't returned yet. We're beginning to get a bit worried."

"She came to get us," Violet told them, "and then when we were up in our room again, she fell through a hole in the floor. We're afraid that Count Olaf might have her in his clutches."

"Desserts," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "It was Kit's idea to make Veronal Fulminating Desserts to get our brother back." Violet translated for the Dalloways.

"Well," Clarissa said finally, "I guess it's just as much our business as it is yours. How could we refuse?"

"We couldn't," Ron answered. "Let's get to work on these desserts."

Everyone spread out over the kitchen and formed a sort of an assembly line, which is a line of people, usually with a conveyor belt, each having a task to make the finished product. The Baudelaires, Dalloways, Quigley, and Phil did the best they could, as they did not have a conveyor belt at their disposal. Violet crushed the flaxseed, Sunny mixed it with the orange juice, Quigley crushed the cheese crackers, Clarissa dumped them in, Ron filled each bowl with whipped cream, and Phil carefully placed a cherry on top of each dessert. As the assembly line continued on in its paces, Sunny asked Phil to recount to them what had happened since they had last seen him by saying, "Tell!" and getting Violet to translate.

"Well," said Phil, sticking a perfectly round cherry on top of a perfectly sculpted mountain of whipped cream, "Captain Widdershins and I were staring out one of the portholes…actually, I was; the captain was staring at his sonar device, and we waited an awfully long time for you four to return, and the captain was beginning to get worried, but I told him that everything was probably fine and you were probably having the time of your lives. So then I heard this noise, and the captain began to panic, but I told him it was probably a bit of seaweed and we shouldn't lose our heads. But then we heard a distinct knock, and I was beginning to get a little bit worried."

Violet and Quigley exchanged glances, a phrase which here means "looked at each other knowing that it must have been horribly terrifying if Phil had gotten scared."

"So the captain looked out the window—_and there was a woman outside the porthole. _She wasn't wearing any gear at all, but she had a little device in her mouth allowing her to breath underwater. I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and so I told the captain to let her in so I could get a closer look at her breather. Actually, I never really got the chance to look at hers, but she did give me my own when we left." He took a small spherical device out of his pocket and waved it at them, as if to show them that his story was indeed true.

"What did she tell you?" Clarissa asked, absorbed in the story.

"She said that she was a friend of V.F.D. and that she knew where the sugar bowl is!" Phil proclaimed in a whisper.

Violet nearly jumped off the floor where she was smashing the flaxseed into usable slivers. "Where? Where is it? Phil, we have to get to it before Olaf does!"

"Oh, I'm sure Olaf and his crew haven't even _thought _of the sugar bowl yet," Phil said with a large reassuring smile. "But the woman didn't tell us where it was. She didn't even tell us her name. All she did was tell us to get off the submarine quickly, or else all would be lost. I thought that maybe she was overreacting to something, because everything seemed A-OK, but the captain started reciting his personal philosophy and ordered me to activate the valve, so I did, and we left the submarine for you four to find. Apparently you did perfectly all by yourselves! Done!"

The last word of Phil's story wasn't really part of the story at all, but merely a declaration that he had put the finishing touches, a phrase which here means "a cherry," on the last Veronal Fulminating Dessert. Violet surveyed their accomplishments with pride. "Check the recipe," she told Sunny. "Is that all there is to it?"

Sunny shuffled over to the recipe book that the recipe was contained in, flipped to the page, and skimmed to the bottom. Then she gave a sharp intake of breath. "Nine!" she exclaimed. "Nine more!"

"Nine more what, Sunny?" Quigley asked, taking the book from her. His eyes fell on the place on the page at which she had been pointing. His face fell. "It needs to sit for _nine hours _before it's ready?"

"What?" Violet cried, taking the book from him. "That can't be right!"

"Is," Sunny said sadly. "Have to wait."

Phil checked his watch, which was working perfectly despite all the time he had spent underwater. "This is almost opportune!" he told them. "It is eleven o'clock at night! Amazing! We can spend the night here while waiting for these Veronal Fulminating Desserts to prepare themselves! Wow, we have perfect timing. Everyone lay down and have a good night's sleep."

Often when someone tells you to have a good night's sleep, you are in a bed or a cot or at the very least a sleeping bag, and you have a pillow and a stuffed animal, if you so have the need. But all the children had to sleep on was the hard kitchen floor, and even when they huddled up all next to each other, it was still pretty cold for sleeping. And even if they could get somewhat comfortable, all the children could think of was Count Olaf and his evil crew of associates, each more evil than the last. One by one, they all dropped off to sleep, so no one was awake when a figure silently slipped into the kitchen and covered Sunny's mouth with a black-gloved hand.

"Sunny Baudelaire," said a female voice, "you are coming with me."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Often when someone is kidnapped or taken hostage by villains who are good at what they are doing, they find themselves undergoing a series of extremely unfortunate events. They are often bound and gagged, a phrase which here means "tied up tightly with ropes and having their mouth stuffed up with something called a gag." Then they are placed in perilous situations, such as under a large knife or over a lake of flesh-eating leeches. Of course, this is all under the pretense that the villains who have done the kidnappings are villains who are good at kidnapping and other such activities. This was not the situation that Klaus had found himself in. Olaf was not good at anything except scheming to steal fortunes, and though the kidnapping itself had gone as well as could have been hoped, the hostage keeping was not going as horribly as it might have been.

"Hello, hello, hello, Baude-brat," Olaf said as soon as the hook-handed man, otherwise known as Fernald, had his hooks violently entangled in Klaus's shirt. "It looks like we've got you once again! Tee hee torture chamber!"

"You cannot escape our clutches!" laughed Esmé. "Ha ha humphrey! I think I'll slap you with my tagliatelle grande, which is a very unpleasant and somewhat sticky experience!"

Klaus had a split second to look up before a rather large piece of sticky pasta slapped him in the face. As Esmé had warned him, it was an unpleasant and somewhat sticky experience, but not all that torturous. Klaus was determined to see the best in this, but this was the only best he could find.

"So we've got one of the cakesniffers!" Carmelita Spats chimed in. When someone chimes in, it means that they are agreeing with someone, like a wind chime when one chime rings and then hits all the other chimes, causing them to all ring at once. But in Carmelita's case, "chiming in" had a different meaning. Her voice was so high-pitched, and squeaky, and often off-key even when she wasn't trying to sing, that it sounded like a wind chime that someone buys at the flea market because nobody wants that never makes a beautiful chiming noise but produces the most horrible and annoying ringing that can leave one with a headache for hours. "May I reproduce a villainous laugh, Esmé?"

"Of course you may, dear," Esmé said fondly.

"All right, then! I will laugh at this cakesniffer in the face! Haha…" And there she stopped. Apparently, though Carmelita had a high-pitched, squeaky voice with which to give people throbbing headaches, her villainous skills, particularly those in the laughter department, were severely lacking, a phrase which here means "she could not laugh as Count Olaf and crew had deemed correct." "…Hahaha!" she finished lamely.

"Oh, Carmelita dear, that was marvelous!" Esmé said, wiping tears from her eyes. "That was amazing! Doesn't everyone else think so?" And then Esmé brandished the tagliatelle grande, as if anyone who didn't think so was about to undergo a very unpleasant and somewhat sticky experience.

"Um…yes! That was amazing!" said the hook-handed man, who was still trying to detach his hooks from the front of Klaus's shirt.

"It was the best villainous laughter I've ever seen!" someone else cried from the far reaches of the room.

"Amazing!"

"Great!"

"Wow! I can see the headline now!" cried the woman who was seated next to Esmé. "Carmelita Spats wows villainous crowd with evil laughter! Wait until the readers of the _Daily Punctilio _read that!"

Klaus looked up suddenly, recognizing the voice. To his surprise, he recognized the woman from the Village of Fowl Devotees, Heimlich Hospital, and the Caligari Carnival. "Hey," he cried out, "you're that reporter who—"

"Silence, orphan!" Count Olaf thundered. When Klaus immediately clammed up, a phrase which here means "went all silent like a clam that has shut its shell," he grinned wickedly. "Don't even think about talking to any of our allies, even Geraldine Julienne! Tiggle tiggle triumph!"

"Countie," Carmelita whined, and her whining was worse than her regular speaking, "you haven't complimented my evil laugh yet."

"Yes, Olaf, you need to tell Carmelita how wonderful she is," Esmé said, prodding Count Olaf in the shoulder.

Now Olaf clammed up. He looked sideways at Carmelita and back at the table and then mumbled something unintelligible, a word which here means "unable for anyone to hear it and tell if it was a compliment or something else."

"What?" Carmelita asked as sweetly as she could, which was not very sweetly. It sounded like someone had plugged up her nose.

"Good job, Carmelita," he murmured.

Carmelita grinned and started to tap dance in celebration, which caused most of the villainous villains to clap their hands over their ears. But two villains, who each had one end of the table all to themselves, immediately got to their feet. The one at the far end of the table was a man with a beard and no hair, and the one at the near end of the table was a woman with hair and no beard. Klaus recognized them immediately. "You two were on Mount Fraught with Count Olaf! You burned down the V.F.D. headquarters!"

"Yes, young orphan, we did," said the man with a beard but no hair. "Olaf, stop this nonsense. This child is not an evil cohort. She's an annoying, tap-dancing little brat who cannot laugh villainously. Please take her away, or we will be forced to get ugly."

Klaus recoiled at the very thought as Esmé and Carmelita gasped in unison, a phrase which here means "because the man had insulted Carmelita." "How could you insult our precious little Carmelita?" Esmé asked in shock, but quietly, because the man and woman gave everyone in the room, including Klaus, a shiver down his or her spine. Olaf, on the other hand, looked as happy as if he had finally stolen the Baudelaire fortune. Carmelita began to sniffle uncontrollably.

"Put the orphan somewhere else," ordered the woman with hair but no beard, "and let us commence with our meeting, will you? We have much more important things to discuss than the placement of a pink ballerina."

"Like the immediate training of everyone in the room to laugh our villainous laugh?" Olaf asked hopefully.

"No, you fool! To discuss the location of the sugar bowl!" the man with a beard but no hair shouted.

Esmé got to her feet. "Go wash the dishes in the Vicinity For Dining kitchen, orphan. Carmelita, watch him so he doesn't get away."

"I'm…sniffle…sob…sniffle sniff…recovering," Carmelita sniffled and sobbed.

"Then get Triangle Eyes to do it!" Esmé ordered, trying her best to wipe away Carmelita's spurious, a word which here means "made up to weasel her way out of watching the middle Baudelaire do dishes," tears.

Klaus's head snapped around so fast it made his neck ache. He had, up until this point in the proceedings, completely forgotten about Fiona. But there she sat silently, at the far corner of the table, her eyes hidden behind fogged triangle-shaped glasses, and a frown etched upon her face. Klaus felt like a large stone had been dropped into his stomach, which would have been very unpleasant if he could have gotten his mouth around a large stone. They both sat there, staring at each other, until Klaus felt a large poke in the back of his head. The hook-handed man had poked him with the edge of his hook. "Get moving," he ordered.

Slowly, Klaus took a couple steps toward the kitchen door. "I said get moving!" the hook-handed man roared, shoving him forward again ferociously, a word which here means "in a manner which caused Klaus to have an extremely sore spot on the back of his head." Klaus stumbled forward a few steps and then silently walked over to the kitchen door, pausing to let Fiona through first. Then he took a deep breath and took the plunge, a phrase which here means "stepped inside the filthy kitchen to talk to Fiona for the first time since she had defected."

Fiona stood in a corner, silently staring at the floor. Klaus stepped over a few dirty dishrags to reach the sink, which had piles and piles of soiled platters and grimy utensils from the luncheon. "How much have they eaten already?" he said, more to himself than to Fiona since she didn't seem to be listening. When she didn't answer (he hadn't expected her to), Klaus moved over to the sink and turned on the water. It was clear and cool. Klaus let his hands soak for a minute, as if he could wash away the memories of 667 Dark Avenue burning down less than an hour before.

"You must think I'm a fool," Fiona said suddenly, causing Klaus to knock over a rather large plate into the sink. Surprisingly, it didn't shatter. He turned back to look at her. "Do you?" she asked him, blinking.

"No," Klaus said automatically, a word which here means "not really thinking about the lie he was telling her." "Yes," he said after reconsidering. "No matter how much you want to be with your brother, you should not be defecting and joining Count Olaf. To me…" He sighed. "That is the most foolish thing a person could do."

"Everyone will end up under his thumb in some way or another," Fiona told him. "Look at you. You're washing dishes for him. Isn't that working for him?"

"But I'm here because they caught me. You're here because you wanted to come. You say that everyone will end up under his thumb. I want to at least try to do the right thing. Don't you?"

Fiona sighed, a large mound of fog forming on her glasses again. "I do. But what is right, anyway? Who are we to decide who's right and who's wrong? Who's good and who's evil? Isn't it all just from people's perspective?"

Klaus opened his mouth to tell her no, that it wasn't just from people's perspective, that some things in the world were obviously right and glaringly wrong, and that people had to decide for themselves or everyone would be swept away and devoured in fires, but he realized that it was no use trying to convince Fiona of something on which she had already made up her mind. He took out a long bread knife from the pile, soaked it in water, and tried to get the orange pasta sauce off of it. From his perspective, the sauce seemed like flames licking the metal, and the water was putting it out. "If I can't reason with you, I can't have a conversation with you," he finally told Fiona, not looking at her. "I suppose you could call that my personal philosophy."

Fiona eyed him and hesitated, acting against her father's personal philosophy for the second time since she had adopted it as her own. "She who hesitates is lost," is a good personal philosophy for some, but others take pleasure in hesitating, as they take pleasure in reading books and/or writing coded messages. Hesitating can be a good and positive thing, as can reading books and/or writing coded messages. For example, if you had a personal philosophy, "Never read happy books," and then found one whose summary really delighted you, then it would be a good idea to put down this book this very minute and read that one, so you will not float away in a lake of your own tears. If you had a personal philosophy, "Against all odds, do not put things into code or horrible coincidences will happen to you," and then you were forced into a small helicopter and had to drop a message on the ground in code so only the right people could read it, then it would be a good idea to do that very thing. Once upon a time, my personal philosophy was, "Do not contact Beatrice or you might find yourself in grave danger," but then I was forced to make contact in order to get myself out of grave danger, which incidentally put her into even more danger. And it was a good idea for Fiona to hesitate, because it gave her a chance to reflect, a word which here means "feel rueful that she had joined up with Count Olaf." But after a few moments of reflection, Fiona gathered up her courage and her personal philosophy and stopped hesitating.

"Aye! Count Olaf is too powerful to be resisted. You'll join him some day, Klaus, or die. I would hope that you could be prudent enough to choose the former. Aye." The last "aye" was a said little sigh of remorse, as if Fiona was hoping that she could change her mind. "He's going to do something horrible to the hotel as soon as he finds the sugar bowl."

Klaus stole a glance at her, hoping she wouldn't see him looking as he wiped more pasta sauce off countless other dining utensils. "He's not going to burn it down, is he?"

"Oh, no. Something worse. Far, far worse." She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to block out all the horrible horror that would ensue if Olaf could enact his plan. "He's going to open the helmet."

Klaus reeled in horror, a phrase which here means "could not believe that Olaf would do such a dastardly thing, even if he was an evil villain scheming to steal innumerable fortunes." The helmet in question contained a quarantine of Medusoid Mycelium, which was extremely poisonous. Breathing in even one spore would cause death within an hour. Klaus only knew this because he and Violet had frantically researched to save their little sister only a day before. It seemed like a lifetime ago…Klaus sadly wiped his glasses and continued to scrub the dishes free of villainous grime, only with less vigor than before.

"Triangle Eyes!" called a high-pitched, annoying voice. Both Klaus and Fiona cringed as Carmelita flounced into the room. She had apparently recovered from the insult dealt to her by the man with a beard and no hair and the woman with hair and no beard and was ready and raring to go, a phrase which here means "completely prepared to be mean to orphans and children with triangle-shaped glasses."

"Esmé wants you to go back into the luncheon!" Carmelita said shrilly. "I get to tap dance and sing for the cakesniffing orphan!"

Fiona cast one last sad look at Klaus and trudged out of the grimy kitchen to the Vicinity For Dining, while Carmelita prepared herself to begin her reign of terror, a phrase which here means "singing and tap-dancing." As soon as she opened her lopsided mouth, Klaus got a splitting headache and stood there, washing plates, all day and all night and into the next morning, wishing that his siblings would come and rescue him.

* * *

As Klaus washed grimy, filthy, villainous dishes long into the night, Sunny Baudelaire whimpered in fear as her captor lifted her up, put a hand over her mouth, and carried her out of the Hotel Denouement kitchen. She was either so terrified or so tired that she could not muster up the energy to bite down on the offending hand, and so she was carried up an elevator and into a hotel room. The woman who had taken her (for it was a woman) placed her softly on a bed just her size and began to creep away, apparently thinking that Sunny had fallen asleep again. However, this woman had never met Sunny Baudelaire, and therefore did not know that Sunny was not the kind of child to fall asleep after being kidnapped. Sunny began to whimper as soon as the woman inched away.

"Quiet," the woman hushed. "Experto crede." And the woman silently crept away.

_Experto crede _is a phrase in Latin which means, "Trust one who has had experience." Sunny had no way of knowing this, as she was very small and still mastering English, but somehow it soothed her and allowed her to drift off into sleep. If I had been Sunny Baudelaire, which I am not and therefore anyone reading this may disregard it, or better yet put the book down altogether and go have adventures in a land full of fairies and not a book full of misery…If I was Sunny Baudelaire, I would have leapt to my feet and run after the woman, because I knew her identity and all the information she could hold that could save mine and Sunny Baudelaire's lives, but Sunny did not know such things, and so fell asleep until a ray of sunshine poked through the windows and woke her up.

A ray of sunshine poked through the windows and woke her up. Sunny blinked a few times, trying to remember how she had ended up in such a place, when she had quite clearly fallen asleep on the kitchen floor with her sister, Quigley, Phil, and the Dalloways, but then she remembered how the strange black-clad woman had stolen her away in the night, a phrase which here means "taken her from her sister and friends while it was dark," and brought her here, while saying things in a foreign language. Sunny looked around and did something she had not really done for a long time: she began to cry.

It is a disheartening thing to hear a young girl crying, just as it is disheartening to fall down a mountain after being blown off by the wind. You hear the sound of wailing and then you are compelled to let go of whatever you are doing. In the case with the mountain, it usually ends up in death or dismemberment, but in the case of crying, you run to see what is the matter. A woman burst through the doors to see what was the matter.

"Sunny Baudelaire!" she cried. "Why are you crying?"

Sunny sniffled. "No friends," she told the woman.

"Why, that's not true!" the woman exclaimed, a small smile on her lips. Sunny looked up for a moment and scrutinized the woman carefully. On her feet, which were usually the first things Sunny noticed, she had on sleek black shoes that looked like they had never squeaked in their life. On her long, slender legs were a pair of black pants, perfect for sneaking to places or slipping into disguises. She had long, thin arms ending in long, thin fingers, and her shirt was made of the same material as her pants. She had smile-lines, which are small grooves on your face that show that you smile a lot and are generally a happy person, and her eyes sparkled at Sunny from under a lot of curly brown hair that draped neatly over her back. "That's not true, Sunny," she said again, "because I am a friend."

"Friend?" Sunny asked her. "Experto?"

"'Experto crede' means 'trust one who has had experience,'" the woman answered. "And I have had experience. You may not have heard of me, but I was a good friend of your parents'. My name is—"

"AYE! BEATRICE!" yelled a familiar voice.

The woman sighed. "Yes, that's my name. My name is Beatrice."

And I wish I could tell you that I was there too, to take her away from that horrible place, or rather the horrible events that would happen at other horrible places, but I was not, and so I shall bow out, a phrase which here means "not insert myself into the story yet," and continue to tell Sunny Baudelaire's woeful tale.

A man charged into the room, wearing an extremely conspicuous diving suit with a portrait of a white-bearded man on the front who seemed to stretch out over the vastness of the real man's stomach. The man's face was also broad, and his upper lip was hidden by a mustache that curled up at the ends like a pair of parentheses. Sunny was rather astounded, a word that here means "surprised," to see him.

"Captain!" she exclaimed.

"Aye! Sunny Baudelaire!" the man cried, for he was, indeed, Captain Widdershins. "Aye! I knew you'd make it! You didn't hesitate to come find us! Aye! Because he who hesitates is lost!"

"She," Sunny added.

"Or she! Aye! Beatrice, we have problems! Aye! We have issues! Aye! We may need counseling! Aye! There's been kidnapping afoot! Aye!" When he said "afoot," he didn't mean "an appendage at the end of a leg," but "around here in this area." "They've got my stepdaughter Fiona! Aye! And she's wearing Edgar Guest! Aye! He was a writer of limited skill, who wrote awkward, tedious poetry on hopelessly sentimental topics! Aye! We've got to rescue her from such a horrible wardrobe! Aye!"

"Some of whom have licentia vatum should have it removed," Beatrice remarked.

"Vatum?" Sunny asked.

"Licentia vatum is poetic license," Beatrice explained.

"Fiona defected," Sunny told Captain Widdershins, which meant something along the lines of, "Your stepdaughter betrayed us and went over to Count Olaf's side."

"No! She wouldn't! She's not that hopelessly sentimental! Aye!" Captain Widdershins protested loudly, his parentheses mustache quivering.

"No cum bak," Sunny told him, which meant, "You didn't return to the Queequeg; we were worried about you and Phil."

"Beatrice came and got us! Aye! And we didn't hesitate! Aye! Because he or she who hesitates is lost!"

"I came and retrieved him because I know something he didn't," Beatrice said quietly. "And I came and retrieved you because if Olaf doesn't know your whereabouts, your siblings are safe. He won't harm them if he doesn't have you in his clutches."

"Whaddyuno?" Sunny asked, which meant something along the lines of, "Please give me your knowledge; it could be very important."

"I know," said Beatrice, "where the sugar bowl is."

Sunny's eyes widened, and she looked at Captain Widdershins. "Reely?" she asked.

"Really," Beatrice answered. "You see, a long time ago, it was in the hands of Esmé Squalor, and then my friend took it from her to keep it out of Olaf's clutches at the time of the schism. He gave it to me, and I came here and hid it. We'll have to retrieve it quickly and leave this place. I have a feeling that if it falls into Count Olaf's hands, there could be severe consequences. Combined with the Snicket file, we could be in grave danger."

Sunny nodded.

Just then, the door burst open again and a person rushed in. Sunny's eyes widened and in sudden realization she cried, "Jayess!" That word had many meanings. It meant, "Look! A person!" It meant, "The person to whom Quigley also sent his Volunteer Factual Dispatch!" It meant, "The person to whom the Verbal Fridge Dialogue was addressed!" It meant, "The person with the initials J and S!" But most of all, the one that everyone understood, was the meaning of, "Jerome Squalor!"

* * *

There are times when someone can instantly sense if something is wrong or missing. You may be stepping into the shower and instantly realize that the water is ice cold. You could be going on a walk in a wildlife park and all of a sudden notice that there are no animals, but there are a lot of men around with eye tattoos on their ankles dressed up as animals, and who do not look at all like animals the way a teddy bear does not really resemble a panda. I was once tied up and forced underwater with a heavy ball chained to my ankles, and all of a sudden I realized that I knew my captor's middle name. Often the brightest people are acutely aware of all that is happening around them.

Unfortunately, this was not the case when Violet, Quigley, Phil, and the Dalloways woke up that next morning. Though Sunny Baudelaire was small, she was not easily missed, but the volunteers had been worrying about what would happen with their Veronal Fulminating Desserts, and so they did not think to take a head count, a phrase which here means "make sure Sunny Baudelaire had not been kidnapped."

"They look ready," Violet said, scrutinizing each dessert carefully. On any normal day she would have asked Sunny if they looked ready, since Sunny was the chef in the family, but it was not a normal day and had not been a normal day for quite some time, perhaps since the terrible fire that had destroyed her home. And so Violet quite forgot to make sure her little sister was well enough to check on the desserts.

"They smell ready," Quigley said, sniffing one of them. Quigley also did not think to ask Sunny how she thought they smelled, since she had cooked on board the Queequeg and had much more experience than he did.

"Should I taste them to see if they taste ready?" Phil asked.

"No!" the four younger volunteers cried out at him.

"I just thought it would be quite all right since I was one of the ones who made them so they wouldn't possibly affect me adversely," Phil said optimistically.

"I'll find trays to carry them on," Clarissa volunteered, and she immediately began rummaging through many drawers and cupboards, searching for trays.

"I'll look for anything else we might need," Ronald volunteered, and he began to search through nooks and crannies near him.

"We'll need disguises," Violet said thoughtfully.

"True," said Quigley.

"Will these do?" Ronald asked, straightening up. He held out a rather large hamper marked, "Vesicle Full of Disguises."

"Those will do perfectly," Violet said, "though I hate the thought of more disguises." She frowned slightly, thinking back to the time when she and her siblings had been forced to wear horrible pinstriped suits, and how Sunny's was too big for her. Quigley frowned and thought of the time on top of the Mortmain Mountains when Sunny had been able to sneak away by disguising an eggplant as herself. And Phil smiled brightly and thought of the time when the three siblings had been putting on underwater suits on the Queequeg, and how Sunny had been too small, and so she had had to curl up in her diving helmet. And all three of them realized the exact same thing at the exact same time.

"Sunny!" Violet exclaimed.

"Sunny!" Quigley said.

"Where could the youngest Baudelaire have crawled off to?" Phil asked cheerfully.

"She wouldn't have left without telling me," Violet said worriedly, "unless it was extremely urgent and very important."

"Maybe she needed fresh air," Phil said. "She's probably having the time of her life. Just in case she comes back, I'll stay in the kitchen and wait for her while you four go serve the Veronal Fulminating Desserts to the villains."

"I guess," Violet said, biting her lip. "I hate to think of Sunny somewhere in the hotel by herself. Let's go to the luncheon. Phil, if she doesn't come back in half an hour, alert the front desk."

"I will," Phil promised brightly. "You kids get dressed and go."

Ronald passed out waiter costumes he had found in the Vesicle Full of Disguises and they all put them on reluctantly, a word which here means "feeling as if they were transforming themselves into villains." Clarissa had located four trays on which to place their secretive substances, and within ten minutes they were filing out of the Hotel Denouement kitchen, Clarissa leading the way and Violet at the end. The latter gave one last sad look to Phil, who gave her a happy thumbs-up. Quigley touched her hand lightly as they proceeded across the hotel lobby and to the Vicinity For Dining door. Clarissa gave five light taps in quick succession with her fist.

"Go away," a rude voice said from beyond the door.

"Your desserts are served, monsieurs," Clarissa said in a very realistic French accent.

"Acting," Ronald whispered to them as the door opened.

"It's about time!" snarled the person who had opened the door. Violet was slightly scared to see that it was the hook-handed man, Fernald. "Where have you waiters been? We've been waiting for our desserts since yesterday evening! Get in the room!"

They filed inside, none daring to really get a good look around. Violet was the only one who took everything in fully. Her mouth dropped open.

Every single villainous person whom she had met since her parents had perished, and some she hadn't, was seated around an enormous, elaborately decorated table. It had about twelve centerpieces, which defeated the purpose since none of them were actually in the center. They all looked at the crowd of short waiters disdainfully, a word which here means "what looked to Violet Baudelaire as if they didn't believe they were really waiters." Violet gulped. Though she was coming in here to save her brother (who, incidentally, was nowhere in sight), she felt as if she was walking right into Count Olaf's clutches.


End file.
